Background: IgA nephropathy (IgAN) is the most common glomerulonephritis worldwide and up to 40% will develop end-stage renal disease (ESRD) within 20 years. However, predicting which patients will progress to ESRD is difficult. The purpose of this study was to develop a predictive model which could accurately predict whether IgAN patients would progress to ESRD.
Methods: Six machine learning algorithms were used to predict whether IgAN patients would progress to ESRD: logistic regression, random forest, support vector machine (SVM), decision tree, artificial neural network (ANN), k nearest neighbors (KNN). Nineteen demographic, clinical, pathologic and treatment parameters were used as input for the prediction models.
Results: Random forest is best able to predict progression to ESRD. The model had accuracy of 93.97% and sensitivity and specificity of 80.60% and 95.27%, respectively.
Conclusions: Machine learning algorithms can effectively predict which patients with IgA nephropathy will progress to end stage renal disease.
Keywords: Cohort studies; IgA nephropathy; end-stage renal disease (ESRD); machine learning.